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Tag: SNAP

Republicans are expected to vote this week, possibly as early as today, on a proposal to cut the food stamp program by $39 billion over the next 10 years, while reforming the program to tighten eligibility and emphasize the importance of work. From the outcry among congressional Democrats and much of the media, you could be forgiven if you anticipated the outbreak of the Great Famine of 2013. In reality, the hysteria is just plain silly given how modest the Republican plan really is.

Note that as recently as 2000, just 17 million Americans participated in The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food assistance program formerly known as food stamps, at a cost of less than $18 billion. Today, roughly 48 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, costing taxpayers more than $82 billion per year. Yet according to the Department of Agriculture, nearly 18 million American households remain “food insecure.”

In the face of serious questions about whether the growth of SNAP has been justified and whether it successfully addresses hunger in America, Republicans are discussing cuts that simply trim around the edges of the program.

For example:

Aggregate Spending will still remain at elevated levels even with these cuts. Even with the additional cuts (totaling $39 billion), average outlays from 2013-2023 will be almost $73.5 billion, which is more than $5 billion more than outlays were in 2010 (they were $68.3 billion). In 2023, long after CBO projects the effects of the recession to have subsided, with unemployment declining to about five percent, outlays will still be $69.6 billion, higher than any year before 2011, and more than $1 billion higher than 2010.

Almost all of the savings come from returning to traditional SNAP rules or ending loopholes. For example, the Republican proposal would restrict so-called ‘categorical eligibility,’ restoring traditional categorical eligibility, which requires receipt of cash assistance for food stamp eligibility. Currently, there are several ways that low-income families can become eligible for SNAP. For instance, households can qualify for SNAP benefits if they meet the program’s income and asset test: a gross income below 130 percent of the poverty level and a net income below 100 percent of poverty, as well as less than $2,000 in assets (although there are some exemptions, such as the value of houses, a car, and retirement accounts). However, more often participants become eligible for SNAP because they are also eligible for other government welfare programs. Nearly two-thirds of households receiving SNAP qualify through this broader categorical eligibility and were not subject to asset tests or certain income tests. This has allowed eligibility to creep much farther up the income scale, allowing many non-poor Americans to receive benefits. The Republican proposal would dramatically scale back categorical eligibility, requiring more recipients to meet income and asset requirements. As a result, the program would be refocused on those most in need.

The Republican plan would also eliminate the so-called LIHEAP loophole, which allows states to increase benefits for individuals who also receive utilities assistance under the LIHEAP program. Approximately 16 states have used this loophole to leverage nominal (as little as $1) LIHEAP payments into an increase in households’ SNAP benefits. Republicans would require states to provide LIHEAP benefits of at least $20 in order to qualify for the exemption, preventing them from manipulating the system to increase federal payments.

The bill puts a greater emphasis on moving recipients from welfare to work. The Republican proposal simply ends waivers from SNAP’s traditional work requirements that were granted to states starting in 2010. Prior to 2009, able-bodied adult recipients between the ages of 18 and 50, without children, were required to work, participate in an employment and training program, or participate in a SNAP “workfare” program for at least 20 hours per week. Otherwise, they could collect SNAP benefits for only three months in a given 36 month period. That requirement was waived nationwide in 2009, and on a state-by-state basis after 2010. Currently, 44 states have such waivers, although some states have announced that they will voluntarily relinquish their waivers next year. (Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin and most counties in Ohio). As a result of these waivers, in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, only 27.7 percent of nonelderly adult participants were employed, while another 28 percent reported that they were in the process of looking for work. That means that fully 44 percent were neither employed nor actively searching for work. Looking specifically at working age, childless, able bodied adults, almost three quarters or 2.8 million SNAP households, had no earned income.

Yet we know that work is the key to getting out of poverty. Just 2.8 percent of those working full-time today are below the poverty line, compared to 24 percent of those not working. Far from being cruel, by restoring work to a primary component of the welfare system, Republicans would be nudging recipients onto a path out of poverty.

Moreover, it is worth noting that the Republican proposal actually increases funding for pilot projects designed to increase work effort and reduce dependency.

The food stamp program is long overdue for reform. The Republican plan is a very modest start.

Debate on the House Agriculture Committee’s version of the next farm bill will begin in the Republican-controlled chamber in June. One of the most contentious issues will be spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, a.k.a, food stamps). The House Ag bill would cut SNAP spending by $20.5 billion over 10 years versus the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline. That’s too much for Democrats and it might be too little for conservative Republicans.

The first chart shows the dramatic increase in inflation-adjusted SNAP spending since 2000. (See here for a quick background on what caused SNAP spending to more than triple since 2000).

The second chart shows the projected amount of spending under the House Ag bill versus the CBO’s baseline. Sum up the difference and you get the $20.5 billion over 10 years in cuts. On an annualized basis, it becomes clear that we’re hardly talking about major cuts to the food stamps program. Moreover, as the first chart shows, spending would remain near the elevated levels of recent years.

That’s the message I came away with after reading an online article from a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter about a decision by the state of Pennsylvania to limit eligibility for food stamps. The article is a perfect example of the difficulty advocates for limited government face in communicating their ideas through the mainstream press.

At issue is the PA Department of Public Welfare’s decision to eliminate eligibility for food stamps for people under the age of 60 who have more than $2,000 in assets (the value of one’s house, retirement benefits, and car would be excluded). The DPW estimates that only “2 percent of the 1.8 million Pennsylvanians receiving food stamps would be affected by the asset test.” Indeed, the DPW’s website notes that “Because of changes to SNAP, most Pennsylvania households are not subject to a net income limit, nor are they subject to any resource or asset limits.”

(SNAP is the acronym for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was known as the Food Stamp program until 2008 when Congress changed its name to sound more palatable. The program is run jointly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state governments, but federal taxpayers pay for the direct benefits.)

One of the “changes” that the DPW refers to is categorical eligibility, which basically means that Pennsylvania households already receiving benefits from other welfare programs, including cash welfare and Supplemental Security Income, automatically qualify for food stamps. In recent years, both the state of Pennsylvania and the federal government have made it easier to qualify for food stamps benefits.

Unfortunately, the Inquirer reporter either wasn’t aware of these details or didn’t deem them important enough for inclusion. Instead, he quotes ten—let me repeat that, ten—critics of the DPW’s decision. The critics include a “national hunger expert,” the legal director of a “leading anti-hunger group,” the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, the executive director of the “liberal Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center,” and an older woman who says that she’ll “have to give up paying for my health insurance.”

It took me all of two minutes to get a quote from Nathan Benefield, the director of policy analysis at Pennsylvania’s pro-liberty Commonwealth Foundation:

Unfortunately for taxpayers, politicians in Harrisburg and Washington have for the past few years considered it a “success” to have more families on welfare. Pennsylvania welfare eligibility and spending—including for food stamps—has exploded, threatening to crowd out everything else in the state budget. Means testing for assets is a common-sense reform to ensure those who truly need aid get it.

There, was that so hard?

Of course, journalists who are interested in getting the pro-liberty take on welfare reform are welcome to contact my colleagues and me at the Cato Institute. Honestly, we don’t want people to starve in order to save a buck—we just believe that the federal government is an improper and less effective means for assisting those who are truly in need. Pressed for time? Here are Cato essays on food subsidies, welfare, and federal subsidies to state and local government.

While Congress haggles over Republican ambitions to trim $61 billion in funding for domestic discretionary programs, it’s important to remember that mandatory (or “entitlement”) spending is the main driver of recent and future budget growth.

The following chart compares fiscal 2007 spending to the president’s proposal for fiscal 2012 for the largest areas of overall federal spending:

Note that the area of spending that has increased the most dramatically is “other mandatory.” Major programs in this category range from food stamps to retirement and disability benefits for federal workers. The following chart shows the increase in spending for the largest of these programs:

This area of spending, and the programs that it consists of, are often forgotten in the debate over how to rein in our extraordinary deficits and mounting debt. That needs to change.